Declutter your Taskbar 🚢

A clean and minimalistic UI is what keeps my boat floating. With everything neat and tidy, all distractions are out of the way, leaving me to focus on the essentials.

In Windows 11, there's an easy way to have only the primary applications in your life on your taskbar, while hiding the secondary applications that you use less often.

The magic behind it is this:

1. Choose your primary applications, the ones that you use regularly. For me, it's Firefox, Windows Explorer, VS Code, Morgen and Signal.
2. Pin these to the taskbar.
3. Remove all the other applications from the taskbar.
4. Choose your secondary applications, the ones that you use less regularly. For me, it's Microsoft Store, Settings, Spotify, VPN Unlimited, Todoist and Netflix.
5. Pin them to "Start".

Congratulations, you have improved you work flow and got rid of brain clutter:

1. You have the primary applications always visible on your taskbar, just one mouse click away.
2. You have the secondary applications non-visible but as equally accessible, just one key tab (Windows key) away or, if you like, one mouse click on the start button and another on your desired application away, totalling to two clicks.

This reminds me of the beauty of the More Menu. Good old progressive disclosure, as my UX friends would agree.